And in this connection, it may not be deemed digressive to say, that the many inhuman butcheries with which it was debited by a _not too discriminative public_, never in reality occurred (in no instance unless through accident or mistake), and were pure figments of the scalawag imagination--an imperent element of Southern politics, whose acts had provoked the reign of terror which it took this dishonest means of deprecating. But as nothing could be further from our purpose than to become the champion of this secret movement--which might be inferred from a too ready condemnation of its enemies--we hasten to add our conviction that many of its acts were lawless, many of its correctives applied to social maladies improportioned in severity, and its entire administration, social and political, an incontinent abuse of usurped prerogative. We have said that in politics its influence was hurtful to those in whose behalf it was officiously employed, and we wish to verify this statement in a logical manner. Assuming that our position is fully understood by the reader, the information may be volunteered in its support, that the rank and file of the Order comprised the radical element in Southern politics (native), Democrats and Republicans (and not a few of the latter), a force, which it was reasonable to presume, would enterprise radical measures only in support of its aims. The organization, then, standing alone, and segregated from any influences which itself may have set in motion, could not have failed of ungracious treatment from those domestic surroundings which it had ignored, but upon which it was confessedly dependent. The great _party_ from which it had seceded, controlled by a rigid system of morals in politics, viewed from habit all such movements with suspicion; and as there was nothing in either the manners or the policy of this departure calculated to remove the antipathies of the prejudiced, or to win the affections of the disengaged, reflector of opinion, it failed altogether to secure discriminations in its favor, which would have placed it above such considerations. From this standpoint (_i. e._, its individuality) it conciliated nobody, for even its externals were forbidding; and the ignorant and educated classes alike--though perhaps from diverse considerations--cherished a suppressed sentiment unfavorable to its affectation of the supernatural, and its partiality for the shadowy in nature.